Arts & Culture

Is there a more maligned form of artistic expression than the lowly selfie? Ah, the selfie, the ultimate symbol of this shallow, narcissistic culture that we can probably blame on millennials somehow and which certainly did not exist before Instagram came along and ruined this nice highbrow thing we had going on. Yea verily, I command the selfie to cast itself from atop my lawn!

Of course, if you're going to dump on selfies, you have to choose to ignore the fact that human beings have been etching, drawing, painting and snapping self-portraits for as long as they've been creating art. Back in the day they were called self-portraits, and artists beyond count (including Raphael, Kahlo, Van Gogh, Matisse, Cassatt…you get the idea) painted themselves in a variety of settings and contexts. People who have forgotten more about art than I'll ever know are still debating the difference between a selfie and a self-portrait, but the distinction seems to be largely in the mind and eye of the beholder to me.

• The self-portrait: a cultural history, by James Hall
• A face to the world: on self-portraits, by Laura Cumming

Once photography was invented, people began taking pictures of themselves almost immediately (Robert Cornelius took the first photographic self-portrait in 1839). One of the earliest and most ubiquitous manifestations of the selfie's popularity was the photo booth (or "selfie contraption," which it was never but should have been called), the history of which stretches from the late 1880s to the present day.

• American photobooth, by Nakki Goranin
• Photobooth: the art of the automatic portrait, by Raynal Pellicer
• Photobooth: a biography, by Meags Fitzgerald

 
It didn't take long for photographers to start exploring the artistic possibilities of the selfie, as painters had before them, and over the decades it has become a significant and dynamic genre.

• The camera i: photographic self-portraits from the Audrey and Sidney Irmas Collection
• Auto focus: the self-portrait in contemporary photography, by Susan Bright
• Andy Warhol: Selbstportraits = Andy Warhol: self-portraits, by Andy Warhol

Female artists in particular have often practiced self-portraiture to explore their identities, challenge taboos and stereotypes, and to proudly display their artistic talents. It seems an odd coincidence that selfies are often and so vociferously dismissed as superficial or otherwise unworthy (spoiler: it is not a coincidence).

• Seeing ourselves: women's self portraits, by Frances Borzello
• Mirror, mirror: self-portraits by women artists, by Liz Rideal
• Francesca Woodman: works from the Sammlung Verbund
• Eleven Years, by Jen Davis
• History portraits, by Cindy Sherman

I'll close this run through the history of the selfie with a quick look at the book that gave me the idea for this blog post when I recently stumbled across it in the stacks; several years ago a friend of mine spoke at the Trampoline Hall Lecture Series, and the program that evening consisted of prints from Unofficial portraits: Canadian politicians photographed by themselves, by Andrew Danson. In 1987, Danson set up his camera and lights in the offices of politicians across Canada, handed them the shutter release and left them alone to shoot a roll of film as they saw fit. The results ranged from fairly conventional to surprisingly odd.